What do people who own social media platforms gain from it and how? Where do they get the revenue from? I know that ads make up some part of it but is the revenue generated from ads enough?
What do people who own social media platforms gain from it and how? Where do they get the revenue from? I know that ads make up some part of it but is the revenue generated from ads enough?
The major tech companies like Google, Facebook, etc don’t sell user data. That’s a common misconception. The data is what makes the company valuable - nobody else has it. It wouldn’t make sense for them to sell it, because they’d lose their competitive advantage over other companies.
Advertisers can target ads based on the data, but the advertiser never actually sees user data.
Yea, I mostly meant selling your data to advertisers, but in the case of big companies the ad platform is ofcourse internal.
Advertisers don’t see any of the data though. What the companies are really selling is your attention.
They sell your eyes and your mind.
It’s not a misconception, it’s just how people say what’s happening. They’re basically selling their ability to make a profile of you based on your data. It’s just colloquially said as “selling your data.”
Some people think the big tech companies literally sell your data though, so IMO it’s important to clarify.
There are companies that do that though, like Acxiom, LiveRamp, CoreLogic, etc. With Acxiom at least, you can buy lists like “high net worth individuals who are likely to buy a new car in the next 6 months” and get a list of names, phone numbers, and email addresses, based on data they’ve collected from both public and private sources.
Those data broker companies collect data from things like supermarket loyalty programs (to determine consumer spending patterns) and other companies who are willing to sell data about you, and compile them into profiles.